CHAPTER VII
The material for "Historia Amoris" having been put into shape for use, Mr. Saltus began to study along a new line. Puzzled and confused as to what he really believed, he agreed to study the sacred books of the East. None were omitted,—the Zend-Avesta, the Upanishads, the Vedas, the Mahabharata—with its jewel the Bhagavad-Gitâ,—the Egyptian Book of the Dead,—the Talmud and the Koran.
Between their leaves he found a new world. Thereafter he was forever digging for jewels,—which when found dazzled him with their beauty. With the enthusiasm Balboa may have felt at discovering an unknown ocean, Mr. Saltus went up the heights to the Garden of God, steeping himself in the perfume of occult and esoteric lore. Subconsciously, he had found food for his soul.
Rushing uptown to my home he would explain as soon as admitted:
"I have unearthed a gem. Listen."
Then the ideas and ideals of beauty I had so often put before him were handed back to me. Seeing them in print had made them real and impersonal. The Gitâ, which hitherto he had but dimly and imperfectly understood, after that epitomized the double-distilled wisdom of the world to him.
One phrase from the Egyptian Book of the Dead moved him profoundly and made him think along a new line. It referred to the soul in the Court of Amenti, pleading for admission to the heaven world. "I have not talked abundantly. I have not been anxious. I have harmed no heart. No one have I made weep." The last phrase cut.
"Pre-suppose," he would say, "that your dream of reincarnation is true. My God! What a debt would confront me next life! I hope it is all a myth."
It was at this time that the effects of his careless letters to the English girl came home with a shock. Rushing up to my house one evening, white and shaken with emotion, he said that a young man had called to see him at the Manhattan Club, just as he was finishing dinner. After introducing himself as a brother of Dorothy S——, he told Mr. Saltus that the girl had, after his last letter, gone into a decline and died. He himself was not only ill, but in want, with a wife to take care of. After exhausting every effort to get employment in the States, he had reluctantly turned to the man he considered an enemy with a debt to pay.
Mr. Saltus was horrified. Put on the rack by me in no uncertain fashion,—realizing at last that what had been play to him had been a tragedy to another, he found that phrase from the Book of the Dead repeating itself. Like an embodied thing it walked by his side during the day and sat on his pillow at night, whispering in his ear during the hours of darkness, "Behold me! I am your work."